Repeatability of a telephone questionnaire on cat-ownership patterns and pet-owner demographics evaluation in a community in Texas, USA

The repeatability of a telephone questionnaire on cat-ownership patterns, demographics and attitudes towards homeless cats in a community was evaluated. Randomly selected households (n = 100) within Caldwell, Texas, were included in the study. The response percentage was 84% (100/119) among those contacted and 75% (100/134) among all eligible respondents. Repeatability was measured by administering the same survey twice to the first 100 responding subjects, with an average (range) of 48 (25–64) days between interviews. The survey was initially administered from 6 June to 28 June 2005 and the follow-up survey was administered from 19 July to 11 August 2005. Repeatability for most cat-ownership characteristics was fair to good between the two interviews (kappa 0.47–0.82). Knowledge of companion animals and subject attachment to pet questions had good correlations between the two interviews (rsp 0.52 and 0.60, respectively). Subject-demographic questions had excellent repeatability (kappa 0.66–1.00).